A bullet in the head after the fall.
I was already dead when Earth fell. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last. When you’ve died as often as I have, little things like bullets don’t stop you for long. Blackbeard once gutted me like a fish and threw me overboard for daring to suggest that we shouldn’t steal a shipment of food destined for an orphanage. If waking up on the bottom of the ocean isn't a clear sign from your boss telling you to go fuck yourself, I don’t know what is.
I guess I should introduce myself. I am old, ancient even, and I’ve seen the rise and fall of all human civilizations. When I was young, sometime around 115,000 years ago, I did something I shouldn’t have and a weird glowing guy told me I would wander the Earth forever.
We barely had anything resembling spoken word at the time, but it went something like this:
“You there! Dear god man, don’t you know how to bathe?”
“Ugh?”
“Yes, yes, well, I want you to know that I saw what you did there and am very displeased.”
“Ugh.” I replied, pointing to my big stick.
“Ah, it’s so annoying when they’re not developed enough to respond. I need to talk to the language department about this one. Luci, make a note.”
I don’t know what he was thinking, turning up right outside my cave, but I was not having it. In what was possibly the stupidest decision of my short life, I threw a rock at him.
“What the hell is wrong with you? You’ve lost the hair, you’re standing on your back feet. What more could a monkey want? Shall I fetch the bananas?” The glowing guy said, rubbing his forehead in pain.
I was very upset so, naturally, I threw another rock.
I look back on that day and realize how foolish I was for throwing something at what was clearly a god. I chalk it up to having no understanding of modern language… or what a god was. Sadly, the other man had little patience for a cave-dweller and thought I needed to be taught a lesson. Next thing I know, he’s shouting something I still don’t understand, and a really hot rock smacks me in the forehead.
I woke up three days later with the worst hangover in human history. And trust me, I’ve seen all of human history. So before you bring up that one time in college, let me assure you, this was worse.
But this journal is not about hangovers or the rise and fall of civilization through the ages. I’m writing to keep an accurate record of what happened when Earth fell, and t left the planet in disorganized chaos.
Well, dear reader, I must tell you that you’ll be as sorely dissatisfied with me as the mugger that shot me on a Monday morning and left me in an alley with a bullet in my forehead. I truly hoped this would be the last time I died, but, as you’ve no doubt figured out by now, I survived…
Again.
When I stood from the pile of garbage my attacker left me in, I realized several things. One, my wallet was gone. Two, my clothes were gone. And three, New York was much quieter than I’d heard in nearly eighteen hundred years.
Not wanting to be arrested for indecent exposure, I wrapped a trash bag around myself and quietly tiptoed my way into the street. I’d been through enough revolutions and massacres to know something. If the invaders were still here, they would have no qualms killing a man dressed in garbage. Because if I’ve learned anything, it’s that people suck.
No, not sometimes, all the bloody time. They walk into your cave like they own the place and throw a really hot rock at your forehead. Then, walk out laughing like it was the best joke they’d ever heard.
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I’m not bitter.
Seeing the street drew me out of my spiral and sobered me up faster than anything else. In a word, it was chaos. Cars were smashed. Streets shattered. Buildings that stood for hundreds of years were nothing but piles of broken concrete. Who could do such a thing? Why would they do it? In my lifetime, only a few nations would dare attack an urban area like this, and with only one worldwide nation, what was the point?
A light summer breeze carried a scent I hoped I would never have to experience again. It always meant bad things were happening. It was the acrid scent of burned bodies.
Was it the aggressor? No. Attackers would leave the dead to crush the hope of anyone that survived. The mental trauma of seeing a friend lying in the street would do more to crush what little resistance remained than anything else.
That meant there were survivors.
Deciding my best move would be to find some sort of companion, I went against my instincts and followed my nose to the mass grave.
~~**~~
The pungent scent of death led me to where all dreams truly die: Times Square.
Someone had gathered the dead into a pile and set them on fire. Looking back, I can say for certain that I would’ve done something similar. In a concrete wasteland like New York City, it would have been beyond impossible to dig graves for that many people.
Several survivors stood nearby, staring at the flame like it was a great bonfire and this was a county festival. Granted, with the government ban on burning wood, none of these people would’ve ever seen such a fire, but the image sparked a memory all the same. It’s a shame trees have become so rare, children should be able to light things on fire for fun.
“Hi,” I said, walking up and straightening my trash bag, “I can’t begin to describe how glad I am to have found other survivors.”
“Yeah?” a man said with a smile that quickly faded once he got a good look at me. “Um, you seem to have misplaced your pants.”
Laughing nervously, I spat out the most believable lie I could manage. “Well, you know how it is when you get kicked out of the house for eating crackers in bed. She didn’t even let me grab my clothes.”
“And you’ve walked around in a bag for three days?” he asked, scratching his face with a three-fingered hand.
Three days was about right for being shot in the head, especially considering how long it takes for the power that keeps me alive to push out a bullet. The problem was that if I started telling this man that I’d been killed and came back to life, he would either see me as his Lord and Savior or kill me.
Again.
“Well, yeah, what was I supposed to do? Waltz into someone’s home and take what I want? That’s a little barbaric, don’t you think?” I chuckled. It wasn’t too often a caveman could call someone else ‘barbaric.’
“Everyone is dead. We’ve only found a handful of survivors. Those things… they didn’t leave us much, but we’ve found some food and clean clothes. We even have a small camp set up in Central Park if you would like to join us.” The apparent leader stuck out his hand in friendship, ignoring my barb.
Shaking the offered hand, I felt bad. This man was trying to survive, and I was being a jerk. Ok, I’ll admit, I’m often a jerk, but that’s not the point. “So, why the big fire?”
“Because,” he sighed, “I’ve read enough history books to know that you have to dispose of bodies before they spread disease. I’d bring them to a morgue and cremate them, but unfortunately, there are just too many for that.”
“So you took the next most logical step and set a huge pile of folks on fire,” I said, watching a pair of survivors drag another body out of a nearby building and add it to the pyre.
Calling it a body was a stretch. There was hardly anything left. Both legs were missing, and the hands were torn and bloody. Combined with the bloat of a three-day-old corpse, it was hard to recognize it as human.
“Someone had to step up. As much as I would like to be in my apartment hiding and waiting for the end, we have to survive. We have to make it until the Republic realizes there are people here and comes back to save us.”
“The soldiers were here?” I was stunned. The United Human Republic had never deployed Advanced Human Forces personnel to the surface of Earth for anything other than recruitment.
“You didn’t see them? Oh, you missed out. They came in swingin’. They just appeared out of thin air and started shooting. I saw this one guy jump from the roof of the Flat Iron with a big red sword made of Light and cut an alien in half! It was incredible!” The survivor demonstrated the jump by leaping into the air and landing in a superhero pose. When he saw the look of disbelief on my face, he stood up and pointed toward the park. “Anyway. We’re wrapping up for the day if you want to tag along back to our camp. We have fresh supplies in the park. At the very least, you might find a set of clothes that aren’t… plastic.”
I didn’t really want to throw in my lot with a group I’d only just met, but like that one time in Mesopotamia, it was time to carve the wheel or leave the block.
Stupid desert people and their hypocrisy. I showed them how to make a wheel and they threw me out on the accusation of sorcery. If that weren’t enough, the bastards started using the damned things to conquer the world. I was only trying to impress Nanna. It’s not my fault old Gilgamesh got upset that I was courting his sister.
With no good options left on the table, I followed the strange man to his camp in the park.